Death By Hobgoblin

Death By Hobgoblin
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“The society of Herodia is ROUGHLY based on feudal European society of the 10th-12th centuries.”

i haven’t studied medieval history for a decade like jerry has, so this perhaps doesn’t tell me as much as it does him – but it’s a useful platform to begin learning, so i’m going to sort of “think out loud” about how this relates to some of those D&D preconceptions i keep harping about and see where it takes me.

now, obviously, using a real-world historical model even as a loose framework doesn’t offer much to go on when it comes to factoring in shit like dragons and magic and all the other stuff that makes D&D so great. but let’s start somewhere… and i’m gonna start by looking at wikipedia, by typing in 10th century and seeing what we get.

“The tenth century is usually regarded as a low point in European history. In China it was also a period of political upheaval. In the Muslim World, however, it was a cultural zenith, especially in Spain. Also it was the zenith for the Byzantine and Bulgarian Empires.”

[when i typed in 12th century, it had this to say about europe: “In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and is sometimes called the Age of the Cistercians.” – for what little that’s worth…]

now, that stuff about the 10th century is great because it emphasizes right off that, while our roughly european setting is all peasants and kings, there are also a whole bunch of other ways of living AT THE SAME TIME in other cultures and nations. and while it’s perhaps not very culturally sensitive, it might be helpful to use those as a guideline when thinking about what some other fantasy races, like elves and tieflings and whatever, might be up to in their lands. [which, to be fair, aren’t part of our immediate campaign. yet.]

QUESTION FOR JERRY: are there parts of that map you’ve posted where human rule as you’ve described is NOT the norm? does the kingdom of rackham include any non-human communities?
for example, i think there’s a section labeled something like “Goblin Marches” – do we have any way of knowing what kind of political theories and technology holds sway over there? newspapers, books, gossip – anything?

back to the wiki article – which is here, by the way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_century#Inventions.2C_discoveries.2C_introductions – following links about 9th and 10th century technology near the bottom reveals some pretty cool shit: the muslim and arab lands had all kinds of incredible shit going on at the time: water turbines, hypodermic needles, pinhole cameras, movable type [in china, true] all the way to soft drinks, fountain pens and central heating from underground pipes in syria, to name just a few. like robots! “Al-Jazari (1136-1206) created the first recorded designs of a programmable humanoid robot in 1206…”

so while the kingdom of rackham might be a smelly, low-tech backwater, there could very well be an enlightened, golden age occuring over the next mountain range or on the other side of those “Far Wastes!” i love so much in the upper left corner…

it’s also interesting to note that a lot of the stuff we take for granted in D&D, like plate armor and crossbows, are listed as not being around until the late 14th century. gutenberg and his movable type press isn’t supposed to show up until 1475 but it’s difficult for me to accept that a population without access to cheap, commonplace printed materials would bother with widespread literacy… and yet literacy is now the accepted norm, as far as i can tell, in D&D worlds. you have any thoughts in that regard, jerry? or anyone else, for that matter?

ahhh – well, looks like it’ll be the comments section for us: i think i just answered my own question by trying to post to The Forum, which is apparently an option only the paid subscribers get.

and while i’m not gonna rule out spending money on this at some point down the line, i’m also not gonna be the first one to volunteer throwing good money away on something we’re only experimenting around with at this point…

anyone know if there’s a way to put character sheets or anything like that up on here? it’s be nice if there was already a scanned in char sheet you could just fill in the blanks for… and it’d be really nice if it was easy to update… and it’d be super-nice if there was a way to mark some stuff “public” and other stuff “private” so as not to offend people like adam who get all snarly if you ask what their Dexterity score is so your imaginary robot can get drunk and gamble against his imaginary wizard… i mean, that level of technical accomplishment doesn’t seem too far out of the bounds of what’s possible, does it?

I’m not sure if we’re better off using this comment section or “The Forum” but I thought I’d get the ball rolling by posting something by someone other than Jerry… and, no shit, dude: “rizak1”?! someone else already stole the name “rizak” out from under you?